Today, Pivot3, a leading provider of unified storage and compute appliances based on commodity hardware, introduced Pivot3 vSTAC VDI, the company's stackable virtual desktop infrastructure appliance designed to make VMware View an easier experience.

To find out more about the company's technology and offering, I had the chance to speak with Lee Caswell, Pivot3's founder and chief strategy officer.

VMblog: Pivot3 is more commonly known for its success in the
video surveillance market. What prompted you to make the jump into the unified
storage industry?

Lee Caswell: We started out in the video surveillance industry in 2003
with the Pivot3 STAC, introducing an innovative unified storage and compute
approach where virtualized server applications (video management systems) and
shared storage coexist on the same commodity hardware resources in order to
reduce both cost and complexity. Given our focus on simplifying and unifying
storage networks with virtualized compute resources, it was a natural
progression to leverage our software innovations to address the evolving needs
of the unified storage industry and to help eliminate storage as a VDI
obstacle.

VMblog: In your opinion, what's the biggest obstacle enterprises face when
deploying VDIs? And how does Pivot3 vSTAC solve this problem?

Caswell: The biggest obstacle facing VDI deployments today is the
enterprise’s need to deploy both a simple and affordable virtual desktop
infrastructure to non-SAN experts. Our solution and appliance delivers radical
end user simplicity by completely eliminating any need for SAN expertise and
allowing users to focus only on the number of desktops they wish to deploy.
Pivot3’s VDI solution provides incremental scalability from proof of concept to
production, providing users with predictable ROI and eliminating the need for
large up front investments.

VMblog: We hear a lot about the larger enterprise shops, but what are some of the benefits of unified storage in SME
environments?

Caswell: What we saw in the video surveillance market place was
that the unification of storage and compute on the same commodity appliance
drove both significant cost savings and complexity reduction. The big issue in
the Virtual Desktop world has to do with the complexity of implementing a SAN
together with independent servers. SME customers don’t have specialized SAN
skills and are looking for solutions that are quick to deploy, inexpensive,
converged and don’t require a high degree of specialization.

VMblog: Your product is being offered through Pivot3’s
Production Pilot Program (P3). Can you tell us what the program
entails and how it will benefit your customers?

Caswell: The vSTAC™ P3 rapid desktop production pilot program for
VMware View is designed to provide IT desktop professionals with the ability to
quickly and easily pilot a Pivot3 vSTAC VDI. Certified through the VMware Rapid
Desktop Program, P3 provides customers with a pre-configured,
VDI-ready pilot solution for 50 to 100 virtual desktops that provides for a
simple and affordable customer experience.Best of all customers can
continue to scale their pilot seamlessly into production by simply adding
additional appliances. There is no boundary between pilot and production, that’s
why we’ve called this program: Pivot3 Production Pilot.

•Pivot3 vSTAC VDI “standard appliance”: The ability
to dynamically and automatically scale out a VDI environment by adding
additional appliances each with a capacity of more than 100
desktops

VMblog: Can you tell us what the future plans are for Pivot3 as
you expand in the VDI market?

Caswell: Our plans are to continue to make our VDI solution more
and more consumable, affordable and performing such that we will continue to
lead in the cost per desktop linear scale out. While everyone understands the
promise of VDI, delivering it in a repeatable, scalable, channel and customer
friendly manner will keep us busy for a while. Other important areas of focus
will be to continue to push the out-of-box experience and packaged fit into a
variety of vertical markets.

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Thanks again to Lee Caswell, founder and chief strategy officer at Pivot3, for taking the time out to speak with VMblog.